- "Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate."
The study of how humans acquire language and the role social factors play in language development.
First Language Acquisition: This topic deals with how children acquire their first language, and the different stages they go through.
Second Language Acquisition: This topic focuses on how individuals acquire a second language, including the various factors that influence the process.
Language Development: This topic explores the various stages of an individual's language development, including sound and word recognition, grammar, sentence structures, and discourse.
Language Acquisition Theories: This topic looks at the various theories that explain how children and adults learn language, including the behaviorist, innatist, cognitive, and interactionist models.
Bilingualism/Multilingualism: This topic focuses on how individuals who speak more than one language acquire, use, and maintain their language skills.
Socio-Cultural Factors in Language Acquisition: This topic explores how social and cultural factors such as race, gender, and socio-economic status influence language acquisition.
Critical Period Hypothesis: This topic examines the hypothesis that there is a critical period for language acquisition, beyond which language learning becomes very difficult or impossible.
Language Variation and Change: This topic focuses on the various factors that influence language variation and how languages evolve over time.
Language Attitudes and Ideologies: This topic explores how attitudes and ideologies towards a language can affect language acquisition, use, and maintenance.
Language Policy and Planning: This topic examines how language policy and planning can impact language acquisition and use, particularly in multilingual societies.
Language Contact: This topic looks at how languages interact in contact situations, including language borrowing, code-switching and mixing, and language death.
Sociolinguistic Variation: This topic explores the different ways in which language varies across different communities and contexts, including accent and dialect variation, and language use across social groups.
Second Language Acquisition Strategies: This topic focuses on the various strategies that individuals use when acquiring a second language, including language learning styles, language learning strategies, and language anxiety.
Technology and Language Acquisition: This topic examines how technology can be used to support language acquisition, including computer-assisted language learning, online language learning, and mobile language learning.
Language Assessment and Evaluation: This topic explores how language proficiency is assessed and evaluated, including language proficiency tests, standardized tests, and performance-based assessments.
L1 acquisition: This is the process through which a child acquires their first language, which is typically the language spoken by their parents or caregivers. It usually happens between the ages of 0-5 years.
Second language acquisition: This is the process through which a person acquires a second language, generally after the first language has been acquired. This can happen through formal language learning in school, immersion programs, or other authentic contexts such as living in a foreign country.
Foreign language acquisition: This is the process through which a person learns a language that is not widely spoken or used in their country, culture or region. It can be done through formal training or in informal/social contexts.
Simultaneous bilingualism: This is the process of acquiring two languages simultaneously. It occurs when a child is exposed to two languages from birth.
Sequential bilingualism: This occurs when a child begins to acquire a second language after already having acquired the first language. This can be through formal language learning or immersion in a new culture.
Classroom-based language learning: This is the process of learning a language in a formal classroom setting. It is generally associated with language learning in schools or colleges.
Home-based language learning: This is the process of learning a language at home, usually through interaction with family members or caregivers who speak the target language.
Naturalistic language learning: This is the process of learning a language through immersion, be it through living in a foreign language-speaking country or through authentic communication, and not a formal structured setting.
Computer-assisted language learning (CALL): This is the process of learning a language through the use of technology, such as online courses, mobile apps, interactive programs or video conferencing.
Pidgin language acquisition: This is the process by which a pidgin language is created when two or more groups with different languages come into contact and must communicate. This process of language acquisition is generally informal and often emerges through trade or other shared ventures.
Creole language acquisition: This is the process through which pidgin languages evolve into stable, standardised language systems when local communities adopt and establish them as their main means of communication.
Sign language acquisition: This is the process of acquiring a sign language system, often used by Deaf communities, which mainly rely on visual gestural mimics.
Lingua franca acquisition: This is the process of acquiring a language commonly used as a means of communication between speakers of different linguistics- and cultural backgrounds.
- "The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary."
- "Human language capacity is represented in the brain."
- "Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion."
- "These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation, and coordination."
- "Speech perception always precedes speech production, and the gradually evolving system by which a child learns a language is built up one step at a time."
- "The distinction between individual phonemes is the initial step in language acquisition."
- "Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whether that be spoken language or signed language."
- "It refers to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages."
- "First-language acquisition deals with the acquisition of the native language, while second-language acquisition involves acquiring additional languages."
- "In addition to speech, reading, and writing a language with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language literacy."
- "Linguists who are interested in child language acquisition have for many years questioned how language is acquired."
- "The question of how these structures are acquired, then, is more properly understood as the question of how a learner takes the surface forms in the input and converts them into abstract linguistic rules and representations."
- "Language acquisition involves structures, rules, and representation."
- "Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign."
- "Language acquisition involves acquiring phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary."
- "Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences."
- "These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation, and coordination."
- "Speech perception always precedes speech production in first-language acquisition."
- "Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits."